Activision CEO Hoping For $200 PS3, 360 By '09

Gamespot reports on comments made by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick at this week's Reuters Media Summit in NYC; the publishing veteran feels strongly that deep price cuts are needed in the next two years to ensure that this generation of consoles reaches a truly mass market audience. For comparison: "The original Xbox dropped to the sub-$200 range six months after debuting at $299 in November 2001. The PlayStation 2, which also retailed for $299 when it launched in 2000, fell below $200 in May 2002, and subsequently has sold more than 120 million units as of its seventh anniversary in October. Nintendo's ill-fated last-generation console, the GameCube, was originally listed at $199 when it first went on sale in November 2001, though that price was cut to $150 by May 2002."

Re:so another year of awesome wii sales then?

[DeepZenPill]

People need to stop using hardware sales as the sole metric for determining success. Nintendo's business plan is fundamentally different than that of MS and Sony because they're actually turning a profit on each console sold. The other two rely on game sales for profits, which seems to be working at the moment for the 360, perhaps slowly followed by the PS3.

Take a look at recent sales numbers: http://www.vgchartz.com/aweekly.php [vgchartz.com]

Scroll down to where software sales by system are compared, then subtract out the number of Wii Sports and Wii Play sales from the Wii total to find out the non-bundled sales number. You would end up with software sales as follows (of this generation):

1. 2,369,203 - Xbox360
2. 1,944,527 - Wii
3: 943,709 - PS3

Nintendo's really moving their systems, but with the exception of Super Mario Galaxy and the two bundled games, has a relative dearth of top 10 titles for the Wii. Xbox360 in terms of hardware sales, while trailing the Wii, and depending on the week selling on par with the PS3, is doing quite strongly in software sales. More expensive system, more expensive games, and still sells a lot.

So if you're MS, why cut prices just because the Wii is cheaper? They're going to keep on chugging along until their costs come down enough that the increase in game sales from a price cut outweighs the foregone income on hardware sales.

Nintendo isn't dominating the market but expanding the market, which is exactly what they set out to do. In succeeding at this goal they've shown that there is room for more than one console and discussion of a 'winner' is generally unproductive.

Re:would buy then

[slyn]

I don't see why people think that the PS3 is expensive. Think of how much you would pay for each feature of the system separately.

PS3:
- Blu Ray player: $250++ (on the low end)
- Games: $100++ (PS2 is like $100ish, and the ps3 has much much much better graphics + potential awesomeness due to blu ray capacity)
- Internet Gameplay: $50 (Its 50 a year for XBL, for the PS3 its "free" (in the cost of the games and system))

Congrats, now your at $400. Now think of all the other things you can do with it.

- Upscale DVD's
- Play PS1 + PS2 games upscaled (if you have the right one =/)
- Browse the web (and thus "mod" [arstechnica.com] games.
- "Hack the matrix [pcworld.com]"
- Home (the "Second Life"-like game/thing)
- and More! (firmware updates)

And yes, it even runs Linux!

Seriously though, for all the things you get, I think the PS3 is by far the best value per dollar of the three next gen consoles.

Re:Ill-fated?

[nuzak]

Sony has been making a per-unit profit on the PS2 for years. It's going to take them a while to get the same on the PS3, but it'll likely happen too. The DVD format, BTW, was also a big cost for Sony when the PS2 came out, but it worked out well for them. Sony is arrogant, but not entirely stupid.

Re:so another year of awesome wii sales then?

[moderatorrater]

Wii Play isn't a bundled game. In addition, you aren't taking into account how much longer the developers have had to work with the xbox 360, which allows for more games like Forza and Mass Effect, the games that take a while to make. Also, there are about 33% more xbox 360s that have been sold. Overall, the Wii is still doing as well or better than the xbox in software sales, which means that overall they're doing much better.

Re:so another year of awesome wii sales then?

[KDR_11k]

Don't forget that Wii Sports has substantial sales in Japan and is sold separately from the Wii there.